Too feckless to lead

What does it say about our elected representatives when even a president who grants that marijuana is no “more dangerous than alcohol,” jokes about his past drug use, and faces no more elections in his lifetime is terrified to go along with a massive and still-growing majority of Americans?

That we can’t look to them for anything resembling leadership. The campaign to legalize marijuana — and thus expand personal freedom while minimizing the massive harms that attend to prohibition regardless of the substance being banned — is decades old and has always had to fight first and foremost against establishment politicians and media outlets. […]

Citizens, it turns out, are more than ready to step and demand change when our leaders are too feckless to lead.

Nick well expresses some of the frustration so many of us have felt with our political classes.

59 comments to Too feckless to lead

You know those old movies where some yokel is standing too close to a fire source, then runs around, Vaudeville style, waving at his ass until he sits his butt in a bucket of water (conveniently available)? Nick has replaced the water in the bucket with gasoline.

Didn’t you notice our influence on his brainless blather? In the not very distant past he would have said, “First of all, pot is not benign. There is substantial research that it causes lung cancer and also brain atrophy.”

You are correct in that they are not the right audience, but if anyone is thinking the effort is a waste of time no, it’s not. Because the responses we give to those who are “morons” are read by other people who are not as educated on the subject as we and who may still be making up their minds. Our logical, factual, and researchable (due to links we post substantiating what we write) responses are educating the ones come late to the debate.

The U.S. government allowed the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel to carry out its business unimpeded between 2000 and 2012 in exchange for information on rival cartels, an investigation by El Universal claims.

Citing court documents, the Mexican newspaper reports that DEA officers met with top Sinaloa officials over fifty times and offered to have charges against cartel members dropped in the U.S., among other pledges.

Dr. Edgardo Buscaglia, a senior research scholar in law and economics at Columbia University, says that the tactic has been previously used in Colombia, Cambodia, Thailand and Afghanistan.

“Of course, this modus operandi involves a violation of public international law, besides adding more fuel to the violence, violations of due process and of human rights,” he told El Universal.

It is nice to know all those warehouses of pot the DEA has seized and show off on the Discovery Channel and NatGeo did not go to an incinerator but instead is what we have been smoking for the last decade,,,I was really bummed out about them wasting all that weed.

Obama can’t win either way. Bill Bennett broke wind over at Politico a few days ago, condemning Obama for saying pot was less harmful than alcohol. Mr. Bennett went on to demonstrate he himself can’t distinguish marijuana from the harms of trans-fats in food. He blames ‘dem dirty no-good liburals’ for not treating pot more like 32-oz Pepsis.

“Are we to believe eating a glazed donut is more harmful than smoking a joint? ”—Bill Bennett.

Obama understands our position completely.
Even a partial or half backed admission that the pro cannabis community is right has caused him some flack.
I can’t imagine what pressure he’s under from his handlers.

Norman Gooding LOL. Thanks for the eloquent and well thought response. Critical thinking isn’t your forte’ eh? As I say, go right ahead. Smoke up. Only makes it easier for the rest of us who have learned from our mistakes:)
Reply · Like · 23 minutes ago

Norman Gooding · Top Commenter · None
Paul Novak I am sorry I don’t meet your criteria for telling the truth but thank you for not arguing any of the points,instead you try to marginalize me because I am not as educated as you,,so sad and very disturbing that you run around with a gun,,do they make you put one bullet in your shirt pocket?

Let me put it bluntly. I had been a part of the drug culture for many years. I was involved in aspects you know nothing about, and never will. I also watched what it did to everyday people, what it did to me, as well as close friends. I watched very close friends die. Let me repeat, I watched them die. So in nutshell, take your foggy and misguided drug crusader crap and shove it up your a$$. I could care less about it being legal or not. To me it is Darwinism at its finest. Those who want to hamstring and hobble themselves by altering the natural and effective way their body was designed to work, can go right ahead and do so. And when they continue to be left behind, get nowhere, and lose out, they have no one to blame but themselves. Enjoy your next wake n bake.
Reply · Like · 11 minutes ago

Norman Gooding · Top Commenter · None
Paul Novak I just hope you find another source f money dude,,don’t go ballistic,,I hope you learn to be happy and allow people to live their own lives without being able to taze and bully pot users.
Reply · Like · 7 minutes ago

Norman Gooding · Top Commenter · None
Paul Novak PS:you never had a fiend die from using marijuana if you did the reported lack of death caused by marijuana has been broken,,he is the first and most of the friends I had that died from drug use died because some squad of local terrorists kicked in their door and shot them because they weren’t quick enough to lay on the floor when the screaming adrenalin maxed out group of armed invaders broke into his house that was a wrong address raid,,oops,,all because the tactical teams in this country are being USED as a revenue source,,so don’t get self righteous or be proud of anything you do in the name of “saving America ” for smart people..

Paul Novak · Follow · Top Commenter · Meade Senior High School
I’m all for it!! Yup, I personally will find it hilarious as all these eager beavers find that legalization won’t fix their shot short term memory, make anyone more willing to do business with a stoner, or elevate their standing in society. Heck, I’m almost willing to bet there will come a growth in job openings as employers shed admitted pot smokers in favor of hiring folks who still have their ambition, drive, and ability to remember where they put a pen down five minutes ago intact.

I learned the hard way from over 10 years of heavy pot smoking. It is nothing more than yet another way to self medicate and avoid issues. Those who face life without the smokescreen of mind altering drugs deserve the greater respect and consideration.
Reply · 1 · Like · Unfollow Post · 3 hours ago

Norman Gooding · Top Commenter · None
Paul,,you know all the lies and that means you know all the truths,,,the only people talking out in favor of continuing prohibition are people with a vested interest in prohibition continuing or they latch on to one or two myths and argue them to the end of time. You profes to being a pot smoker yet act as if everyone reacts to grass the same way and will be like you apparently were,,,well tell that to Steve Jobs,Richard Bransen and Carl Sagan,,lack of ambition and drive,,ask the last four Presidents and for lazy ask Michael Phelps and all those professional athletes in trouble for using it to heal their torn muscles after the games,,,so please find another way to make your living or find another cause,,your spiel is getting old and tired.
PS:You look like a NC cop protecting your marijuana bounty money.

That Novak is a piece of work….all the usual cop anecdotal “evidence” signifying absolutely nothing. I don’t want to sign in to the Time site, but someone needs to remind Novak of Upton Sinclair’s quote “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

It seems the words moron, imbecile, and idiot are insufficient to describe the lack of cognisance flowing through drug worriers brains. I think I’ll just call them Shitheads.

Only a retarded monkey would deny the medicinal value of cannabis. First documented in Europe by William Brooke O’Shaughnessy in the mid 1800’s or China 5000 years ago. What possible argument is left for these drug worrier profiteers to keep this medicine from little children having seizures, or seniors with arthritis or cancer treatment side effects. Do they even realize the harm they do casting doubt with no proof other than drug war gossip? They have proven their mean ugly spirit selling out the country and the people. But to keep riding this derailed train is just stupidity for all to see. Shut the fuck up and do the world a favor.

So their lies and gossip keep thousands of other little girls and boys suffering debilitating seizures and death because they are afraid of losing profits on drug treatment? So they lie or just follow the liars without a backbone of their own to decide what is actually right or wrong. Such worthless beings should not have American citizenship.

The Nectar of Delight
The partnership of _Cannabis_ and man has existed now probably for ten thousand years — since the discovery of agriculture in the Old World. One of our old cultivars, _Cannabis_ has been a five-purpose plant: as a source of hempen fibers; for its oil; for its akenes or “seeds,” consumed by man for food; for its narcotic properties; and therapeutically to treat a wide spectrum of ills in folk medicine and in modern pharmacopoeias.

Roseanne Barr ‏@TheRealRoseanne
help us at pine ridge reservation! We need some support! #MORMONS

Sovereignty? Cut the strings to Wall St. Dependency, Grow Hemp! The Ganjawar Comes to Pine Ridge.

Too feckless to lead? Twenty states have passed medical cannabis laws. Two states have legalized cannabis for recreational use. A solid and rapidly-growing majority of Americans now say they support legalization. Obama isn’t too feckless to lead on this issue. He’s too feckless to even follow.

So I’m thinking about this yesterday evening, thinking, that blasted summary was vetted and approved by the Secretary of State, wasn’t it? She can’t have much of a chance of prevailing because of that. Also, don’t the nattering nabobs of negativism get to write up a piece of ballot summary hysterical rhetoric to counter that ballot summary?

Well guess what, Florida is a very, very peculiar State. I guess I should have known that because a ballot initiative sponsor has to collect 10% of the required signatures before the Secretary of State will consider the ballot initiative.

So yesterday I learned that the Secretary of State only issues preliminary approval of the ballot summary. It wouldn’t have mattered if Tommy Chong, Willie Nelson or Snoop Lion had been the Florida Attorney General, putting the question in front of the State Supreme Court is part of the process.

/snip/
Unlike many states, Florida initiative sponsors can submit petition signatures at any time. In addition, the responsibility for counting these signatures is dispersed to the Supervisor of Elections in each county. Proposed measures are only reviewed after proponents collect 10% of the required signatures across the state and 10% in each of one-eighth of the state’s Congressional districts. After these preliminary signatures have been collected and proponents have submitted a ballot title and summary (initially approved by the Secretary of State), the Secretary of State must submit the proposal to the Florida Attorney General. The Attorney General is required to petition the Florida Supreme Court for an advisory opinion on the measure’s compliance with the single-subject rule and the appropriateness of the title and summary.

Having grown up in Florida I can vouch for this statement in more ways than one. There’s another little side play that’s going on with this medical marijuana ballot iniative. The party Ms. Bondi belongs to does not want the initiative to remain viable because they fear the youth vote will be attracted to it and they might turn out in significant numbers and they might vote for other things Ms. Bondi’s party does not like. Her party’s leaders have actually openly admitted as much.

-Go along with what polling suggests between 70% and 80% of the public wants?

No, No, NO, NO! Those damn people might vote for other things they want too. Ms. Bondi and her cohorts just can’t stomach the possible horrors of what citizens participating in the democratic process might lead too.

Be that as it may her job required her to make this filing. Just because it’s her job doesn’t mean that she has to do it with such gusto. While I now know that she’s required to file for the review of the State Supreme Court I’m also sure that she has discretion over the content of her filing.

It still is a major distinction in my mind because it obviates the assertion that she’s ignoring the will of the people. Without her being mandated to do this by law and considering the 80+% support for medicinal cannabis patient protection she would be a despicable waste of oxygen.

The 4-3 decision is a victory for personal injury lawyer John Morgan, who spent $4 million on a medical marijuana petition drive, and a defeat for Attorney General Pam Bondi, who fought to keep the question off the ballot.

“The 4-3 decision is a victory for personal injury lawyer John Morgan, who spent $4 million on a medical marijuana petition drive, and a defeat for Attorney General Pam Bondi, who fought to keep the question off the ballot.”

“Be that as it may her job required her to make this filing. Just because it’s her job doesn’t mean that she has to do it with such gusto.”

I called a friend of mine in Florida and asked if he remembered any voter initiative being so vociferously opposed by Bondi during her tenure. His answer, “Never”. She should have routinely done her job and then just shut the hell up. But no. She comes across as someone who wanted to thwart the will of the people for purely political reasons. Which makes her look bad — which is good.

The Marijuana Policy Project, a pro-legalization group in Washington, D.C., this morning called on President Obama to fire Leonhart for her remarks. Said Dan Riffle, a lobbyist for MPP: “The DEA administrator’s continued refusal to recognize marijuana’s relative safety compared to alcohol and other drugs flies in the face of the president’s commitment to prioritizing science over ideology and politics. She is neglecting the basic obligations of her job and fundamentally undermining her employer’s mission. This would be grounds for termination in the private sector, and the consequences for Ms. Leonhart should be no different.”

Done!
I started following (and taking part in) the legalization of marijuana debate/war, mostly “via” change.org back before many folks even knew what it was. The large volume of people gave me a sense of pseudo-anonymity = Enough so that I wasn’t fearful of taking part in the debate.

It’s kinda went downhill for a couple years – *partly* because the ‘someone’ hacked them due to a protest petition – of a political prisoner in china).
Also, someone(s?) found a way to automate the forwarding & signing process = Then showed-off via Petitions in obscure languages (the kinda that don’t use anything resembling an alphabet) – with ‘highly unlikely numbers’ of signers…

So much so, that (I logged in one day and found they had scrapped a large portion of the site & more or less started over.
Some people have been posting especially petty and silly petitions on it (either out of stupidity – OR – as a means to discredit the site?)

Now, you can sign in via an Email addy, but to forward stuff from there – you have to use Facebook or Twitter – And – I just checked and saw that you can use your Gmail or Yahoo address books to select people to forward petitions to – that’s fairly new AFAIK (it’s news to ME at least).

Unfortunately, the site has gotten some sketchy press over the last 4-ish years – BUT, there are many people that still use it for serious things.
Note: There were a few hundred short of 18,000 signers for this petition when I signed it.
That fact that it’s ‘officially’ started by/coming from the MPP helps – and that probably kept it from automatically hitting many spam/trash folders unnoticed.

There’s also another from the MPP there on change.org, = “President Barack Obama: If marijuana is safer than alcohol, remove it from the DEA’s schedule of drugs”
That one is at ~70,000 or so~ signatures and references – David Remnick’s profile/article in ‘The New Yorker’, so I’d encourage you to check for that petition as well – if you’re headed to “change” to sign the petition mentioned above, or if you’ve never been there at all.

“…the group Leonhart addressed, confirmed that she “called out Obama for what Youngblood described as ‘irresponsible’ comments that were a ‘big slap in the face’ to cops who have lost their lives keeping drugs off the street.” He said she received a standing ovation.”

Once the drug war ends, cops will no longer be losing their lives enforcing ineffective and pointless drug laws. Drug related graft and other corruption in police departments will be gone as well.

My entire conversation with the Tactical officer was removed ,,no curse words were used,no threats ,,me thinks the officer went overboard with his comments and he had the conversation removed to save face.
They did leave the DEA partnering the Sinola cartel link up but removed his reply from it,,,that is OK I have it saved in several places.

My fist computer had a 460 MB hard drive and for about half what you paid for it you could buy a bigger 700 MB hd and the floppy disk held 144 MB,,,if there is any program on the one I have now has any programs that are only 460 MB.
If you wanted to play a game you had to have a cd or floppy because the hard drive only had about 150 MB of space left after you loaded Windows 3,1,,when Windows 95 came out you only had about 10 MB of space and it never did work exactly right,,had to go get a newer computer,,,it had a twice as much speed on the processor and 5 times as much hd,,but it still took a disk to play any of the good games,,

It is there when I link from here but gone when I link from Facebook,,wow,,weird.

Any way,,I need an op-ed written that includes the conversation and eloquently points out the officers attitude and the fact that he persecutes marijuana users because they may not be able to find an ink pen while admitting marijuana is a medicine because people are self medicating with it he fights legalization and MMJ reform because the federal bounty money is more important than right or wrong,,the citizens he is hired to “protect and serve”(they think)need to know this fella is running around town with guns and bullets and he doesn’t want the federal grants program to end because he and his agency lose funding is neither honorable or keeping the citizens in his community safe.
ALLAN,,KAP,MALCOLM,SERVETUS,PETE,FRANCIS,,if any or all have time I will find out what city is close enough that his employers and neighbors will read the op-ed/s.
Thanks guys

One thing about Florida’s unique process for putting citizen generated referenda is that the with the State Supreme Court approving it there’s not much room left to argue that the law is “illegal” or whatever word the sycophants use in Florida.

Radley Balko wrote in his Morning Links, today:
• This should get interesting. At a closed-door law enforcement conference, DEA Administrator Michele M. Leonhart apparently slagged President Obama’s comments about pot and alcohol.

scientist1 commented:
9:14 AM PST
Since the DEA chief is apparently a member of the anti-science party, she has no business working on the public dime.

How is disobeying a direct, legal order from POTUS not treason? She was ordered to lay off the dispensaries, yet she chose to disobey. During wartime. (the war in Afghanistan is still on, is it not?) That is treason. There is only one penalty for treason.

They’re hiding behind the mediocrity of the opposition. And part of that is the affiliated marketing of jar wars in red states. 1 party seems to be ignoring the rulings against it. See the RMS for 1/27/14

We have so many bureaucracies Congress has to meet with them in shifts,,there isn’t a meeting room in Congress to get all the legislators and bureaucrats in at the same time,,if the bureaucrats each bring an assistant they would have to rent a domed football stadium in Houston and fly them all down and back for a meeting,take a week for everybody to meet each other and put a face to a name.
While there in Houston they could take tours of the fence built on the border by illegal aliens hired by contractors that were kin to TX legislators and bureaucrats.
Then Timothy could fix America’s biggest problem.